Artists v. Collectors: Where Will It Go?

Daniel Grant makes an interesting point but isn’t sure where it goes. He’s flummoxed that the Artist’s Rights movement has run down an unforeseen path in the Jancou/Noland and the Sobel/Eggleston cases. As Grant points out, we have to cases where the artist is said to be adversely affecting the value of their own work.

Uniting the two lawsuits is the fact that artists have made arguable claims about their work — that it is damaged and had undergone “material and detrimental changes,” that it is unlike older prints of the same image — which may have harmed monetarily the collectors of their work, and these artists can do this based on nothing but their own say-so. Is this what artists’ rights have come down to?

Perhaps Noland’s work has been disfigured in some way that would be harmful to her reputation, and possibly “limited edition” can be narrowly defined to refer only to specific size, numbering and production process, but two things are clear: First, judicial rulings are a very expensive and adversarial way to resolve disagreements and, second, allowing the artist to be sole arbiter will only create ill will and mistrust.